🎨 Help Save OHOS and Protect Brock Keep on Oxford Road!
OHOS (Open Hand Open Space) is Reading’s only dedicated contemporary art studio and gallery, based in the historic Brock Keep on Oxford Road. For decades, we’ve supported local artists, hosted cultural events, and brought our community together through creativity. Now, we need your help to secure its future! 🏛️❤️
🌟 What’s Happening?
Reading Borough Council has put Brock Keep up for sale, and we’ve made a cultural offer to preserve it as a thriving hub for art, culture, and community. The Council will decide its future in early February—this is our chance to save it!
🌍 Our Vision:
With incredible partners like The Engine Room, Jelly, Reading International, Reading HongKongers, and Reading Refugees, we’ve put forward a plan to celebrate the history of Brock Keep while creating a sustainable arts space for everyone. ✨
🖊️ Take Action!
Sign our petition to show your support and help protect this vital part of Reading’s cultural identity. Together, we can keep Brock Keep alive and thriving for generations to come!
📲 Link in bio to take action! @theengineroomsite@thejellyreading@readinghkers@readinginternational
#SaveOHOS #BrockKeep #OxfordRoad #SupportTheArts #ReadingCulture #CommunityMatters #PreserveArt #PreserveCommunity #TogetherWeCan #ProtectOurHeritage #ArtsMatter #CulturalSpaces #artforchange
📢✨ Help us save OHOS and protect Brock Keep! 🎨🏛️
Reading Borough Council will consider the sale of Brock Keep our cultural bid to save it for Art and Community in late January—but we still need your support before it’s too late! ⏳🖋️
Our vision is to preserve Brock Keep as a sustainable arts and cultural hub, celebrating its history while keeping it a vibrant space for creativity, community, and culture. 🌍🎭 We have a solid plan, great advisors, and fantastic partners, including Engine Room, Reading HongKongers, Reading International, Jelly, and Reading Refugees. Together, we’re ready to secure Brock Keep for future generations. 🤝💡
🖋️ Sign our petition today to show your support and help us protect this vital centre of art and identity on Oxford Road! Link in bio! 🌟
#SaveOHOS #BrockKeep #SupportTheArts #ReadingCulture #CommunityMatters
Brock Keep - the historic former armoury and gatehouse which is home to artist studios and a contemporary art gallery fivesevenone.org
Brock Keep, completed in 1877, is a fine example of the Victorian keeps, built to aid recruitment and to increase local pride. They provided a ceremonial gatehouse, guardroom, fire engine house, and secure storage for arms, ammunition and soldiers’ kit. They were designed by distinguished architect Major H C Seddon of the Royal Engineers.
Reading’s Keep is one of the surviving few that have not been demolished or converted. It is grade II listed and is particularly special because of its setting next door to the Lutyens War Memorial and its original Army Depot that is still occupied by the 7th Battalion the Rifles. Its original features are well preserved.
Since 1980 it has been used for artists’ studios and exhibition space for many artists, run by the independent organisation OHOS. In the early 1980s, the ground floor was also used as a shelter for homeless people.
@mayor_of_rdguk@theengineroomsite@openhandopenspace@thejellyreading@whatsonrdg
:
From the OHOS Archives:
1991-1993
A5 Flyers mainly designed by Marcus Cole, for a series of talks & presentations at OHOS by the following artists / photographers.
Images 1&2:
David A Bailey
Images 3&4:
Helen Escobedo
Image 5:
David Hevey
Images 6&7:
Chila Kumari Burman
(talk given by Veena Stephenson)
Image 8:
Tom Mulligan
Images 9 & 10:
Bipinchandra J Mistry & Santoshni Perera
(Exhibition flyer including an announcement of an informal debate, chaired by Mark Sealy: @autographabp )
#davidabailey @helen_escobedo_@davidhevey@chilaburman
#archive #openhandopenspace #ohos #rdgarts @openhandopenspace
Thank you again to everyone who has supported OHOS so far. Your voices have already made a difference in ensuring that our case is being heard.
We want to share a brief update following our recent meeting with Reading Borough Council.
While the Council acknowledged the value of our work, they were clear that they are not currently able to support visual arts provision, either in the short or long term. At the same time, they confirmed that access to space is a major issue across Reading, with many cultural organisations in need of suitable premises.
We therefore asked why, in this context, the Council has chosen to dispose of Brock Keep, one of the very few spaces still in its ownership, without exploring alternatives or considering its wider cultural and community value. No clear answer was given beyond the fact that decisions sit across different committees and that resources are limited. This highlights a wider gap between recognised need for cultural space and current decision-making.
Importantly, the future of Brock Keep has not yet been decided, and the process remains open. Social and community value will be considered alongside financial value. This means that what we do next really matters.
@openhandopenspace@whatsonrdg@visitrdg@rdg.today
Blood, Sweat & Tears
19.6.2026 - 28.6.2026
@openhandopenspace
As part of Open For Art 2026 @thejellyreading
This year The Engine Room turns 10 on 2.7.2026
To mark this moment, join us to delve deep into our archive—of new work, of process, and of ideas not yet dreamt up. It will be both retrospective and speculative: a space to reflect, and a space to imagine forward.
The programme will unfold across a series of shared experiences. We will hold feasts, we will dance, we will plant seeds in an inch of soil.
Drawing rooms will open as intimate spaces for conversation and collective thinking—places where ideas can be sketched, tested, and held in common.
This is both a reflection and a provocation: an invitation to honour the labour, creativity, and collective energy that have brought us here—and to imagine what comes next.
#openforart2026
@theengineroomsite
:
From the OHOS Archives:
Exhibited at Open Space: Feb / March 1992
Danica Jojich
‘ARMED TO BE ALLOWED’.
*
‘Danica Jojich’s travels in Serbia, where she met both her parents’ families and experienced life there through her relatives, left an indelible mark on her which continues to impress itself in her artwork. Jojich dedicates her works to people she cares for, introducing a very personal narrative into each installation. She uses common, everyday objects like clothes racks, pillows, newspapers, linen, and felt to present socio-political topics within a context familiar to the viewer. Despite the comfortable atmosphere created by “home-made” objects, Jojich asks the viewer to examine the way they look and understand these objects. Larger issues such as family, immigration, war and feminism can be found embedded in her manipulation of this material. The personal speaks of the political in her art. In her wearable pieces, from her Armed to be Allowed (1990) series, the domestic narrative is purposely interwoven with the political one, opening up unlimited identifications and associations both private and public.’
The OHOS Archives are all in A4 folders and live in the kitchen / communal area. These are scans of those past events. Thank you to all who originally decided it was a good idea to keep all of this stuff together.
#archive #openhandopenspace #rdgarts @openhandopenspace #ohos #danicajojich
751 LOCAL PUNK
with drawings by Jimmy Yoder
at 571 Oxford Road Gallery in Reading
JIMMY IS NOT ASKING. HE’S STARTING.
LISTEN LIKE IT HURTS.
JUMP UNTIL THE FLOOR SHOUTS BACK.
DRAW LIKE YOU’RE SCRATCHING INTO CONCRETE.
NO SITTING STILL. NO NEAT LINES. NO APOLOGIES.
Jimmy Yoder PUNK
A Special Event of the 571 LOCAL the People’s Program Exhibition
JIMMY IS NOT ASKING. HE’S STARTING.
LISTEN LIKE IT HURTS.
JUMP UNTIL THE FLOOR SHOUTS BACK.
DRAW LIKE YOU’RE SCRATCHING INTO CONCRETE.
NO SITTING STILL. NO NEAT LINES. NO APOLOGIES.
571 LOCAL — The People’s Programme
The People’s Programme is a community-led initiative rooted in care, collaboration, and collective power. Built by the people, for the people, it brings artists, thinkers, and local residents together to ask two essential questions: What do we want? and How do we make it happen together?
22 February 2026
From 14:00 to 16:00
Venue｜ Five Seven One Gallery
Organised by Lisa-Marie Gibbs and The Engine Room
@theengineroomsite
#whatsonreading
:
From the OHOS Archives…
Images 1-5:
Graphics & Posters for a series of ‘Open Studio’ events during 1989 and 1990 featuring the studio members from this time
Image 6:
At the back of the archive there includes this list of studio artists outlining their diverse and eclectic backgrounds
Images 7&8:
Some documentation. There seems to be little in terms of actual work from this time; more-so a record of how information was disseminated through the almost forgotten art of flyer and poster design. Most of these are printed out on A3 and at the time I’m sure it wasn’t predicted that in the future, a domestic scanner would be A4 (hence the misaligned efforts to stitch them together digitally).
#openhandopenspace #ohos #archive #readingarts #contemporaryart
:
From the OHOS Archives…
‘PERFORMANCE ART’
Image 1:
A3 poster for an evening of Performance Art at OHOS on 03rd June 1989, featuring…
Max Eastley & Tim Hill
David Medalla & Brian Morgan.
*
FILMS FILMS FILMS FILMS FILMS
Image 2:
As part of Reading’s International Festival in 1989. In the archive it says: ‘Films chosen for their relevance to international issues, both documentary and fictional, were from Circles, Arts Council and Cinema of Women’. This was organised by Susan Taylor, a studio member at OHOS.
As part of the festival there was also ‘an exhibition of laminated photographic panels with text and colour by Keith Piper, a young black artist working in Britain whose work covers issues of colonialism and racism’. Also organised by Susan Taylor.
There are no images of Piper’s work but it is mentioned in the line up of the festival (top left, Image 2). The artists and films is an impressive list including the likes of Valie Export, Jeanette IIJon, Julie Dash and the experimental feminist filmmaker, Sandra Lahire.
Image 3 shows an A4 handout found in the OHOS archives for Lahire’s film ‘Arrows’. More information on these artists can be found on sites like @luxmovingimage
Images 4 & 5:
Close up images of the programme. With an entry fee of what looks like £1 or 50p for concessions.
#openhandopenspace #ohos #rdgarts #archive #readingarts @tongues_of_fire_band@miltonhillnoise@david_medalla_@keithpiper_studio
